The first ever truly embedded SDR

XTRX Pro

Get an XTRX Pro board. Does not include any cables, antennas, or adapter boards.

In Stock

Free US Shipping / $15 Worldwide

$799

XTRX Pro Deluxe Bundle

Get an XTRX Pro board as well as an Antennas + Cables set, a PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter, and a USB 3 Adapter with Aluminum Enclosure (see below for details). Also comes with four extra U.FL-to-U.FL cables and four extra U.FL-to-SMA-male cables.

USB 3 Adapter with Aluminum Enclosure

This adapter converts your XTRX from Mini PCIe to USB 3 and comes with an aluminum enclosure designed specifically for XTRX. The adapter has three status LEDs, a micro USB 3 port, one SMA connector for the GPS antenna, four SMA connectors for the MIMO Tx/Rx antenna pairs, a micro SIM card slot, and a slot for a GPIO FPC cable. Comes with a USB cable and all RF cables for internally connecting an XTRX to the SMA connectors. Does not include an XTRX, antennas, or FPC cable.

Orders placed now ship Dec 31, 2018.

Free US Shipping / $10 Worldwide

$99

PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter

This PCIe card securely holds an XTRX board (not included) so it can be used in a standard PCIe x4 slot. It includes an RF front end with a LNA and PA for up to 100 mW
output on each channel. A TDD switch is
incorporated for applications like TDD LTE. You can bypass the front end by attaching cables directly to
XTRX. This adapter achieves the full 10 Gbit/s
raw bus bandwidth and can be plugged into x4/x8/x16 PCIe
slots. A six-pin JTAG connector makes it easy to program and debug the FPGA. A micro SIM card slot is also present.

Orders placed now ship Dec 31, 2018.

Free US Shipping / $10 Worldwide

$5,999

XTRX Pro PCIe Octopack

This single PCIe card comes loaded with eight (8!) removable XTRX Pro boards, metal installation brackets, enough cables for all GPS and MIMO Tx/Rx ports, and a special board for synchronizing all eight XTRX Pro boards.

Orders placed now ship Mar 31, 2019.

Free Worldwide Shipping

$2,500

XTRX Pro Early Access

Here's your chance to get an XTRX Pro board right away. We'll send you an XTRX Pro prototype board within two weeks of you placing your order and we'll follow up with a production version as soon as they come off the assembly line. Only a handful available.

As Featured In

"It ... has a tuning range of 10 MHz - 3.7 GHz, with a sample rate of up to 120 MSPS. It is also has some interesting additional features such as a built in GPSDO and an onboard FPGA which can be used to accelerate DSP tasks as well."

"Fairwave’s XTRX, a 'truly' embedded SDR (software-defined radio) module now up as a Crowd Supply crowdfunding project, manages to pack an entire 2x2 MIMO SDR with an RF tuning range of 30MHz to 3.8GHz into a diminutive Mini PCIe format."

"Fairwaves is a startup that aims to make deploying and operating mobile networks in rural regions profitable, and their latest project is called XTRX, a high performance Software Defined Radio (SDR) board packed into a mini PCIe card form factor."

XTRX is the smallest easily embeddable software-defined
radio (SDR). It is both affordable and high-performance. XTRX is designed
to enable the next generation of wireless solutions, from prototype
to production.

LTE modems and GPS receivers are commodity parts easily bought in any
electronic components store and added to your project. On the other
hand, everyone designing an SDR-based product had to spend precious
time and money on a custom design – until XTRX.

Don’t waste your time designing yet another SDR. Embedding XTRX into your
product is easy, freeing you up to focus on what your customers really need.

Overview

XTRX is the best platform available today for building SDR-based
products. We designed it with demanding embedded applications in mind:

Compact Form Factor: as a Mini PCIe card, it’s the smallest
commercially available SDR

Thermal Coupling: well-designed thermal interface to a heatsink

Stable Clock: accurate enough for cellular standards

GPSDO: on-board GPS disciplined oscillator

Synchronized Clocks: share the same clock source across many boards

SIM Card Reader: appears as a typical USB serial SIM card reader

High-speed GPIO: 12 total, of which eight can form four matched
LVDS lines

If You’ve Ever Cursed Your SDR…

XTRX isn’t for everyone. We expect most people interested in
XTRX to already have some experience with SDRs. If you’ve
never used an SDR before, XTRX might be a bit overwhelming
for you. XTRX might be right for you if you have:

deployed SDR-based solutions in the field

wanted to develop a massive MIMO system only to realize you don’t have $1 million

cursed your SDR (or USB) for its latency, reliability, or cables

yearned to level-up your SDR skills with cutting-edge equipment

If this describes you, or you are looking for a better SDR, fear not
and read on!

XTRX revision 3 (top)

Use Cases

Here are just a few of the things you could use XTRX for:

Massive MIMO System

XTRX boards can share the same sampling and reference clocks, which
makes it easy to build a massive multiple input, multiple output
(MIMO) system.

Monitor Massive Amounts of Bandwidth

With synchronized clocks, multiple XTRX boards can collectively
monitor very large chunks of the RF spectrum. For example, eight
synchronized XTRX boards could monitor nearly 1 GHz of bandwidth.

LTE Cellular

The combination of XTRX’s accurate, stable clock, on-board GPSDO, and
low-latency PCIe bus makes LTE possible out of the box.

Software-defined 2G/3G/4G Modem

When inserted into a Mini PCIe slot reserved for cellular modems, XTRX appears as a USB SIM card reader.

Drones and Embedded Systems

Power consumption, weight, size, and performance all matter when it
comes to drones and embedded systems. XTRX’s Mini PCIe form factor and
GPIO enable you to interface with a wide variety of single board
computers, sensors, and actuators.

DSP Acceleration

You can use the FPGA to accelerate your real-time signal processing;
the high-speed, low-latency PCIe bus allows shuttling data back and
forth between the host CPU and XTRX’s FPGA.

Why Mini PCIe?

We chose the Mini PCIe form factor for XTRX because it’s the best
option for a high-speed, low-latency bus that is both physically
compact and widely used. In other words, using Mini PCIe results in a
device that is both high-performance and easily embeddable.

While it’s true that many laptops are moving away from Mini PCIe slots
and toward M.2 slots, Mini PCIe is still the most popular PCIe form
factor among standards-based, professional single-board computers
(SBCs) and embedded systems. We will likely release an M.2 version of
XTRX after the Mini PCIe version has been delivered.

We also considered USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3, but the former is
high-latency and the latter is not yet very popular. However, should
you want to use USB 3 or Thunderbolt 3, there are adapter boards for
both.

Adapter Boards & Accessories

While Mini PCIe is a great form factor, you might need something
else. That’s why we developed the USB 3 Adapter with Aluminum
Enclosure and the PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter. We’re also offering
Antennas + Cables known to work with XTRX. All of these are
available separately, or together in the XTRX Deluxe Bundle. In
addition, we’re offering a special XTRX PCIe Octopack loaded with
eight removable XTRX boards.

USB 3 Adapter with Aluminum Enclosure

This adapter converts your XTRX from Mini PCIe to USB 3 and comes with
an aluminum enclosure designed specifically for XTRX. We’re working
hard to maximize the heat dissipation through the metal case so you
won’t need a fan even under long, heavy loads. The adapter has three
status LEDs, a micro USB 3 port, one SMA connector for the GPS
antenna, four SMA connectors for the MIMO Tx/Rx antenna pairs, a micro
SIM card slot, and a slot for a GPIO FPC cable. The adapter comes with
a USB cable and all RF cables needed to connect an XTRX to the SMA
connectors within the aluminum enclosure. The adapter does not include
an XTRX, antennas, or FPC cable.

XTRX USB 3 Enclosure (front)

XTRX USB 3 Enclosure (back)

Initially, we wanted to implement USB 3 using the gigabit transceivers
on the Artix 7 FPGA. This would have made the adapter really simple,
but it turned out the transceivers are not capable of USB 3 out-of
band (OOB) signaling. In the end, we settled on using the Broadcom
USB3380
chip. You won’t get the same level of performance through USB 3 as you
get in native PCIe mode, but we’ve tested running an LTE eNodeB (among
other applications) through the adapter and it works well. We may
realize further performance gains by taking advantage of the USB3380
chip’s internal 8051 microcontroller, which we haven’t yet utilized.

XTRX USB 3 Adapter block diagram

This USB 3 adapter is great for rapid application development – you can
use your XTRX wherever you don’t have access to Mini PCIe, such as
your laptop, you can plug and unplug on the go, reflash the FPGA image
without rebooting, etc. Also, the USB3380 has four GPIO pins that
we’re using for JTAG emulation, so you’ll always be able to unbrick
your XTRX if your FPGA experiments go awry.

PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter

This PCIe card securely holds an XTRX board (not included) so it can
be used in a standard PCIe x4 slot. It includes an RF front end with a
low-noise amplifier (LNA) and power amplifier (PA) for up to 100 mW
output on each channel. A time duplex division (TDD) switch is
incorporated for applications like TDD LTE. You can bypass the front
end by attaching cables directly to XTRX. This adapter achieves the
full 10 Gbit/s raw bus bandwidth and can be plugged into x4/x8/x16
PCIe slots, though it won’t fit into an x1 slot unless the slot has an
open end. A six-pin JTAG connector on the edge is compatible with a
JTAG-HS2
cable, so you can easily program and debug the FPGA. The board also
has a micro SIM card slot.

XTRX PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter

XTRX PCIe x2 + Front End Adapter block diagram

XTRX PCIe Octopack

If you need a massive MIMO deployment or have a large swath of
spectrum you need to monitor, you’ll want one of these limited
availability Octopacks. This single PCIe card comes loaded with eight
removable XTRX boards, metal installation brackets, cables for
all of the GPS and MIMO Tx/Rx ports, and a special board for synchronizing
all eight XTRX boards.

XTRX PCIe Octopack (bottom)

XTRX PCIe Octopack (top)

The Octopack is based on a switch that routes between a single x4 PCIe
2.0 card and eight x1 PCIe 2.0 cards. This means you can’t
simultaneously utilize the full bandwidth of all eight XTRX boards,
but it’s still capable of running LTE-A and other applications. All
eight XTRX boards on an Octopack can be synchronized using the
included sync board, which has a more stable clock generator and
connects via the included FPC cable to the first XTRX. Using external
clock synchronization ports (CLK_IN/PPS_IN), it’s possible to
synchronize multiple Octopacks, thus creating 32 x 32, 64 x 64, or
even larger MIMO systems.

XTRX Octopack block diagram

Flexible Development

Hardware

The XTRX hardware itself is proprietary, though the hardware
accessories we designed for it (e.g., the USB 3 and PCIe adapters) are
open hardware.

Firmware

XTRX’s main FPGA code is open source and without a viral license, so
not only can you modify the code, but you can also develop your own
proprietary FPGA blocks. The FPGA is approximately 30% utilized. We
will share a detailed utilization report in a future update. You can
upload your own firmware with our USB 3 adapter board or with a JTAG
cable and our PCIe adapter board. If you are good at soldering, you
can even solder JTAG directly to the XTRX board – that’s how we
programmed our first samples.

Host Software & Drivers

The host-side software and drivers are open source.

We developed our low-level API to maximize performance (i.e., we’re
using a zero-copy interface). We provide a SoapySDR interface to our
low-level library, so you can quickly start developing if you’re
already familiar with SoapySDR. For example, using SoapySDR plugins,
you can easily get UHD
support. Of course,
there’s always the option to interface directly to the low-level API
if you don’t want to use SoapySDR or need to eek out the most
bandwidth and lowest latency.

The USB 3 adapter relies on a libusb wrapper, so it will work on
almost every platform libusb works on. In contrast, PCIe
communication requires a kernel-level driver for direct memory access
(DMA) and interrupt handling. Our host library talks to a device
provided by the kernel driver. Currently, we have an implementation
for Linux only. A Windows driver is in early stages of development and
will be released later. We don’t plan to develop PCIe drivers for
other platforms right away. Our Linux kernel driver exposes TTY
devices for GPS, UART, and SIM card UART, so you can use existing
software, like gpsd and xgps. The adapter also provides a
kernel pulse per second (LinuxPPS) interface for handling the lowest
levels of jitter in NTP-like applications.

By Professionals, For Professionals

Developing a cutting-edge product requires more than just snapping
together a few ready-to-use pieces. Over the last year and a half,
we’ve been through three major revisions and many minor revisions of
XTRX to find the optimal ratio of price, performance, and power
consumption. In order to deliver the best product possible at an
incredible price, we took deep dives into many thorny issues. For
example, we wrote our own PCIe DMA implementation so as to maximize
bus throughput while staying within the constraints of the smallest
Artix 7 FPGA.

We did this work so you wouldn’t have to. With XTRX, you can
incorporate an SDR into your own designs without first becoming an
expert in the rarefied art of SDR design.

A Brief History of Fairwaves and XTRX

At Fairwaves, we’re familiar with the problem of not being able to buy
an off-the-shelf SDR. Way back in 2008, we had an idea to build an
SDR-based GSM base station that could be deployed in real networks. We
got a USRP1 and tried to run OpenBTS, only to struggle for days before
realizing cellular standards require 0.05 to 0.1 ppm clock accuracy
but the USRP1 has only 20 ppm clock accuracy. We needed a better
clock, so we created
ClockTamer, an open
source, highly accurate, programmable clock source.

Soon after, we found the USB connection used by USRP1 was neither
reliable nor easily embedded in a compact system. So, we created
UmTRX, an industrial-grade SDR that became the
basis of our UmSITE
product, a rugged, network-in-a-box GSM base station that has been
deployed around the world and has withstood everything from Saharan
summers to Siberian winters.

In 2016, we started looking into 4G (a.k.a. LTE) and 5G wireless
systems and realized we needed something better. Today, we’re
launching XTRX to eliminate size, performance, and cost barriers to
making the next generation of wireless solutions.

Manufacturing Plan

We are using the same manufacturing and supply chain partners for XTRX
that we’ve been using for other projects over the past several
years. We will release the revision 4 manufacturing files to our
partners at the end of this campaign. Components procurement and PCB
fabrication will take place through March 2018, followed by PCB
assembly in April, testing and packaging in May, and shipping at the
end of May and into June.

Risks & Challenges

We will be shipping revision 4 of XTRX to backers of this campaign.
The version will have only minor changes to the current revision 3,
which has undergone extensive development and testing. We believe
there is a very low risk that the design itself is faulty.

The biggest risk is in the supply chain, such as delays introduced by
parts shortages. Though such issues can’t always be avoided, we’ve
been manufacturing SDRs since 2013 and we know how to reduce the
likelihood of issues and to mitigate their effects. Regardless, we commit to
communicating openly and honestly about manufacturing progress. Be
sure to subscribe to the project updates to get the latest
news.

We are a vertically integrated vendor of cellular equipment focused on the needs of emerging markets. We are developing, manufacturing, deploying, and operating turn-key cellular network solutions including radio equipment, towers, power and backhaul all the way to a core network and SS7 interconnect. Our team has been building software-defined radios and systems based on them since 2009 and is well known for its ClockTamer, UmTRX, and UmSITE products.